spandex

I use a nitro zorb patch in my filter, which means i have no nitrite reading at all, but i have around 1-2ppm ammonia
but i cant seem to lower it a great amount. it was way past 10ppm. test went blue after awhile
i never lost any fish besides the guppys which went the best when i got them
i have alot of fish in there from angles to discus.
so i wish to get the tank pefect.
i belived the tank was full cycled but then it did a large jump of ammonia.
which i belived was my pH dropped to around 4.5 with out me knowing it and may have killed off all the good germs in the tank?
is this true?

what im really worried about is if it is to cycle again, will the patch prevent it as no nirite will form?
so will the ammonia get broken down.
i do a 30ish lt water change almost every day and a vacume
the tank is a 160lt
i have lowered the food intake to 1-2 small feeds aday

i have spent countless amounts on "cycle" in a bottle and so on with no good results besides being broke

Timesdragonfly

I'm just a beginner myself, and i am having no luck with my tank... so take my advice with a grain of salt. I will tell you that i know, my tank wouldn't cylce until I took the ammonia media out of my filter (it was used to remove ammonia) which prevented the cycle from occuring. It seems to me that if nitrites aren't alloud to break down into nitrates, your tank won't cycle. It's chemistry (something i am good at). See what other folk have to say before doing anything, but I would say that your going to have to take the nitrite patch out in order for your tank to cycle. And while it's cycling keep doing daily water changes to keep your fish happy!

Best wishes,
~J~

Tumbleweed

I recomend removing all chemicals from teh tank that are designed to remove nitrite, ammonia and so forth and just let teh tank go with dailey water changes 25-50% and check the water condition on a regular basis. The fish can handle sme bad numbers as long as it is a slow change. Quick changes it what cause the most problems.

Isabella

Hi Spandex,

I don't know what the "Nitro Zorb" product is supposed to do, but if you're having problems with the cycle while using this product, then maybe it's not helpful. What I'd personally do is I'd cycle my tank naturally. You say that when you thought your tank was fully cycled, you suddenly got an ammonia spike. Ammonia spike can be the result of adding too many fish at once to a new tank (even if it's fully cycled), rather than of a pH drop. (When did you get all of your fish and how many at once did you get? That is, how soon after setting up your tank did you get all of your fish?) The pH drop may indicate high nitrate. High nitrate may cause the pH to go down a lot. Besides, how many fish altogether do you have in your tank and what kinds? A 160 liter tank is approximately 42 US gallons - while the Discus are still young (and small) they may be OK in such a tank. But with time, they'll grow a lot, and they'll need a much larger tank, especially if the 42 gallon tank is stocked a lot. I'd personally not put Discus in anything smaller than 75 US gallons (284 liters).

chickadee

The NitraZorb patch will not allow the formation of Nitrates and so does prevent the normal progression of the nitrogen cycle from happening so if the tank is not cycled, it cannot be left in the filter. you can replace it AFTER the cycle is complete. But most of the time they are unnecessary. Are you trying to artificially attain the "perfect" levels of water parameters? or do you really have such horrible readings on the ordinary tap water that it actually needs to be treated. Most fish really do better being allowed to adjust to the levels of the tap water as long as the levels are not excessive. If you test your tap water right out of the tap with NO CHEMICALS in it, what are your readings for nitrites and nitrates? If the nitrites is 0 and the nitrates is under 10 then you do not need to be using anything to remove nitrites or nitrates. The patch is doing more harm than good. Every time you add anything to the water that is not to feed your fish, you are changing the natural chemistry that the fish has to live in and adjust to and they have come from a store and tanks that have used tap water I can promise you, unless as I said the tap water in your area is toxic.

The best thing is just get a good dechlorinator like Amquel+ or Prime or StressCoat and do not add anything else. Forget using Cycle. It is not good for anything. It does not make your tank cycle any faster and the cycle you get by using it is not the same stable bacteria strain as the one you get if you do a normal cycle. The minute you STOP using their product, there go the bacteria. You will buy the product forever and NEVER have a good stable and longlasting cycle because of it. The stable cycle will come in time the same way any other one does (by the breakdown of ammonia to nitrites and then to nitrates). If you did not already have the fish there are methods of doing fishless cycles that are a little quicker but now that the fish are there it is too late for them. Just continue to do testing and water changes to keep the ammonia down and wait for the tank to cycle.

Rose

spandex

after some hardcore vac and lots of water changes and getting rid of my 4 large kissing fish and cutting down my feeding for around 10 days
my ammonia is .1ppm from wellllll over 10ppm, the test goes blue its that dark of green...

i just let the tank sit there and got over it for a while and it fixed it self. i could not make the ammonia even come down 1ppm after 8-10 40-60lt water changers.
but after a big vac it did the job fine. with the patch my ammonia dropped a few PPM and no nitrite reading at all and .10 nitrate
so the tank is breaking down and cycling again..

the nitro-zorb is a perfect product it was the best thing i got for the tank, i wont be using cycle or anything else to help it.
its just a waste of money imho.

i just have to get the hardness down a little and the tank is perfect..

i have around 30 neons or so
1 discus (6-10cm)
3 swordtails
4 large snails (want to get rids of 2)
4 glass fish
2 glass catfish
1 large angel,
3 small angels
2 glass catfish
4 kribensis
3 platies
2 fighting fish
2 silver dollars
3 Gouramis
5 Black widow tetras
2 Golden widow tetras
2 Rummy nose

chickadee

Comments or Advice (Take it either way, remember it is your right to do it your way) I need to make a couple of comments about the comment you made about working on the hardness of the water.... You have snails and you intend to keep some of them right? You should be so GLAD that you have HARD water!! This is what they need to make good hard shells, if you take the water and soften it they are going to need a supplement probably to reinforce their shells or you will wake up sometime and find holes in the snail's shells. It really would be MUCH better if you would just not mess around with your water, I promise. The fish are going to adjust to the natural state of the water MUCH better than they will the first time that the chemistry experiment you are performing on your tank goes awry and it is a little out of their abilities to handle. You can lose them all. Let them adjust and then you will not need to worry about a meltdown. Less IS really better. Just one more thing... 4 Large Snails want to get rid of 2.... if you intend to keep 2 you will soon have 2000. Unless you want a lot of them check to see what kind of snails they are and go all the way down to 1.

Rose
(someone who has fought the snail problem in 3 tanks now)